In today's IT infrastructure, high availability is of paramount importance. Specifically, critical (and sometimes non-critical) components within an IT infrastructure are often layered in redundancy. For example, primary servers may be supported by backup servers; primary switches may be supported by backup switches; primary power supplies may be supported by backup power supplies; and primary storage systems may be supported by backup storage systems.
Oftentimes, various IT devices are mounted within IT racks and need to be serviced in the field. Naturally, as times change, the requirements of these IT devices may change also. Unfortunately, as these IT devices are typically monolithic in design, they are often incapable of accommodating such changes.